Left 4 Dead 2

L4D2 Review

 

This is my second review or at least review with effort. I think I’m going to follow the same guidelines as the first one I wrote… Characters-story-gameplay-personal opinion.

 

             Characters

In my character section I will introduce the four survivors and ALL of the special infected type.

 

 

                       nick                       Rochelle        Coach                Ellis

The four survivors:

1- Nick, the slick clean guy. Although before he was a conman and a stoic gambler. Being the clean guy and him wearing a suit he makes numerous references to needing to clean or replace his suit. Most conmen would leave there team mates behind but Nick seems genuine in helping the other survivors. Just an interesting fact for you, Nick’s voice actor was Hugh Dillon, a big Canadian star with multiple talents, he was in two bands before becoming a solo artist with his own first album “Works well with others” and he has been in a few movies and is on a TV. series called flashpoint. Another thing he does is voice overs for Canadian Chevrolet commercials. Just thought I would mention that

 

2-Rochelle, being the woman of the group does not seem to make her uncomfortable at all. Rochelle is a low level production assistant reporting on the evacuations for the local news station.

 

3-Coach, he is definitely the tough guy of the group but he doesn’t play the stereotypical tough guy. He used to be a high school football coach but suffers from an injured knee. Every once in a while you can hear a Jamaican accent when he talks. Most of my guy friends think that coach is the coolest character and always want to be him when playing. I will admit he is pretty cool but not so much so I would argue so I could be him.

 

4-Ellis, a laid back and somewhat talkative mechanic but still seems like a bit  of a hick. Usually when leaving the safe room he start out with “One time me and my friend” Toby or Keith or something like that. Then sometime he will go into detail but often the others will tell him to shut up.

 

Special infected:

 

the fat ones are boomers ( there are two on the left) The giant muscular one is the tank The one with the hoodie is the hunter the one with the very long tong and weird stuff growing on its face is the smoker the short  one in front is the jockey the one with only one huge arm is the charger and the long necked lady on the right is the spitter although normally they will have green goo oozing from the mouth.

 

 

The Boomer, a bloated infected whose vomit and bile (which may be released at will and upon death) blinds the player briefly and attracts a horde of common infected specificly towards the person or persons vomited on. You can pick them out of a crowd because of there huge gut and they make vomiting sounds although now more so in the first then he second the boomer has become smarter and now tends to hide behind corners

The Hunter, an agile infected that can pounce on survivors from a good distance and when it pounces any survivor near will be knocked away. You can sometimes see them because they are the only infected wearing hoodies but the easiest way to know they’re around is because they growel and when they attempt a pounce they let out a loud scream. 

The Smoker, an infected that can ensnare survivors with its long tongue from a distance and in doing so they will continue to do damage untill killed or meleed and when ensnared survivors can also be attacked by common infected soing much more damage. They are very effective for breaking up the survivors and if not taken care of fast they can easily incapacitate a survivor. Upon death, releases a cloud of smoke that obscures vision but can be found by greenish yellow spores that surround him.You can tell when they are around due too there acsessive coughing.

The Tank, a gigantic, muscular infected that is powerful and difficult to kill with the abilities to knock players backwards, dealing massive damage, and attack from afar by throwing a lump of debris or bashing a heavy object towards survivors. Everyone needs to team up against him  too kill him. They are not hard to spot because of there grotesque muscular body and when he is around the screen shakes and often climactic music will play when he appears.

The Witch, a passive female infected, who, when provoked by loud sounds, lights, or proximity of survivors, will attack her provoker - she is able to incapacitate or kill the provoker (depending on the difficulty setting) in one hit. Everyone knows when she is around because you can hear her weaping and when you get closer she sings some sort of siren song or something of the sorts. If her victims survive, she will attempt to kill them if not killed herself. In Left 4 Dead 2, the Witch now has the ability to wander aimlessly in certain campaigns, such as "Hard Rain" and "The Parish." Later in my personal feelings of the game I will explain how frustrating they can be.

Several new Special Infected are introduced in Left 4 Dead 2, all of which are playable in versus and the new Scavenge game mode.

The Charger is an infected with a mutated, oversized arm, able to move quickly and knock players in its path off their feet. It can also grab players and smash them against the ground to deal major damage. A bit tougher then the rest of the special infected (besides the with and tank) they can not be meleed to get them to stop pummeling a survivor and when pummeling a survivor they do the most damage than any other constricting infected. You only have one warning with these guys, and you have to act fast because they let out a loud howl when about to charge.

 The Spitter can project balls of stomach acid that splatter across an area, quickly eroding the survivors' health as long as they remain within it. With newer, smarter AI s they now cooperate with other infected to really deal good damage like when you are constricted they will spit at you so rescuing survivors will have damage dealt to them and the damage of the constricted is increased. Also when the spitter is killed it will make a puddle of goo on the ground as a final act of revenge. There are no great indicators for these infected except the bright green goo oozing from their mouths.

The Jockey (and in my opinion the most troublesome) can jump onto the back of a survivor and steer them into other infected. Not only that while riding you they do extra damage although not very much. It is very annoying when they steer you off high places like balconies and cliffs. Not only that they are short so when in a crowd they are hard to aim for and hard to see. You can here the jockeys crazed laughter though but other than that they don’t stand out a lot.

Another feature of the zombies is the uncommon infected which are unique to each campaign. First are C.E.V.A agent I belive there called. There dressed in special suits that make them fire proof and are found on the first campaign, Dead Center. Then there are clowns which are found on the Dark Carnival campaign which when struck with melee it honks there horn alerting more infected of your presence. On the third camaign, Swamp fever there ar med men. Faster then common infected and they crawl making them harder to hit and when you hit them they cover your screen with mud but not harshly until you are hit repeditly. On the final mission there are riot troops with bullet proof fronst so they must be shot from behind which can be very troublesome.

 

Plot

Like left 4 dead, the sequel involves the aftermath of an apocalyptic pandemic. There has been an outbreak of a rabies-like pathogen that causes infected humans to behave like zombies. The four survivors have to fight their way through the hordes of infected, using safehouses along the way to rest and recover, in order to reach extraction points.left 4 dead 2is set in the Southern United States.After climbing a hotel in Savannah to achieve rescue, the survivors find themselves abandoned by helicopters, and make their way to the local mall after hearing word of a second evacuation point there (Dead Center).The mall is found to be overrun, and the four use a stock car to bust out of the mall and travel towards New Orleans. Following an encounter with the survivors featured in left 4 dead ("The Passing", a downloadable mission set to be released in Spring 2010), the group finds the highway completely blocked by wrecked vehicles, and the four are forced to travel through a still-operating but abandoned amusement park, and start a huge fireworks-and-lights show used by the fictional band, The Midnight Riders, in order to attract the attention of a helicopter pilot This mission is called Dark Carnival. Though rescued, they find that their pilot has been infected, and Nick is forced to kill him. This causes the helicopter to crash into a swamp thus making the mission Swamp Fever. Finding brief shelter in a plantation mansion, they make radio contact with a boat captain named Virgil who rescues them, but informs them that he needs additional diesel fuel to make it to New Orleans. Through a torrential downpour, the survivors go ashore, making their way through an abandoned sugar mill to a gas station to get fuel supplies, and return to the boat Hard Rain. Virgil takes them to New Orleans, where the military appears to still be evacuating civilians, before travelling upriver to find more survivors. But as the group make their way to the extraction point, they find that the military is actually bombing bridges to cover their retreat an this is"The Parish" campain. The survivors then make their way across a lift bridge through a mass of infected and board the last military helicopter leaving the city before the bridge is destroyed.

I will admit almost all of this information came from wikipedia. If I didn’t get it I would probably have had nothing for plot.

 

Gameplay

Like its predecessor, Left 4 Dead 2 is a first-person shooter with a heavy emphasis on cooperative gameplay, with some cutscenes presented in the third-person or using pre-rendered movies. The game presents five new campaigns, each composed of four or five smaller maps. In the first three or four maps of any campaign, the survivors attempt to reach a safehouse, while the final stage requires the survivors to call for rescue and hold against a large horde of infected while they wait.

Each survivor can carry one main weapon and either one or two pistols, or one of several melee weapons (introduced in Left 4 Dead 2), such as frying pans or chainsaws. Players start levels with a single pistol, andthe choice to upgrade to double pistols or trade for a crowbar; players who preordered the game received the ability to start with a baseball bat as a downloadable extra. Though melee weapons cause extra damage to the infected when struck, the survivors can use any other weapon or item for weaker melee attacks and to temporarily push the infected back. Players also carry a flashlight, which can be used to maneuver in dark areas but may startle the infected; a first aid kit or defibrillator kit which can be used to heal or revive other survivors respectively; pain pills or adrenaline shots that give a temporary burst of health recovery and agility; and a throwable weapon—a Molotov cocktail to set an area on fire, a pipe bomb modified with smoke alarm to attract a large number of infected before detonating and, new to Left 4 Dead 2, a vial containing Boomer bile, which can be thrown at infected to cause them to turn on each other. A supply of these weapons and items and additional ammunition are generally found at the start of each campaign and within safehouses, but may also be found scattered about the level. I also felt the necisarry need to Make a list of weapons I have found throughout the game.

Guns: Grenade launcher, basic pistol, magnum pistol,scar (battle rifel) Ak-47 M-16 (assault rifel) hunting rifel, sniper rifel, pump shotgun, tacticle shotgun, auto shotgun, silenced submacine gun and mounted heavy machine guns

Melee weapons: crowbar, Machette, cricket bat, axe, katana, frying pan, electric guitar, chainsaw

Throwables: pipebomb molotov and boomer mile

As the survivors make their way through the campaign, they must work together to make their way to the safehouse and rescue. Players are shown the health and status of their fellow survivors, and should they not be in sight, will also be shown the silhouette of the other survivors. Taking damage from the infected causes the survivor to lose health, and their actions become slower as more damage is taken. If a survivor takes too much damage, they become incapacitated, and forced to fight off the infected using pistols until rescued by another survivor or dying from further damage; the character remains dead until the next level, or, in Campaign mode, reappears in a "rescue closet" to be freed by the other survivors. Many of the special infected can quickly finish off a survivor if they are not rescued, and thus the game encourages players to stay as a group and work together to traverse the level safely. Should all the survivors be killed or incapacitated, the game is over, and players must restart that level. While most events the players experience are semi-randomly generated by the game's AI Director, some levels feature staged events which, when triggered by a survivor, cause the players to be rushed by a horde of infected.

Left 4 Dead 2 retains the three game modes of the original game—Campaign, Versus, and Survival—and adds a new game mode called Scavenge. In Campaign mode up to four human players fight against the computer-controlled infected to make their way between safe houses and eventually to rescue; any survivors not controlled by a human player is controlled by the computer. In Versus mode up to four other human players take control of the various Special Infected who try to prevent the Survivors from reaching the next safe house. The two teams swap sides once per chapter and are scored based on their play through as Survivors, with the scoring based on factors such as health, distance traveled and the number of Survivors alive at the end. Survival mode is a timed challenge where the survivors are trapped in a section of the campaign maps, and try to survive as long as possible against an unending onslaught of infected. In the new four-on-four Scavenge mode, the survivor players

are required to collect and use as many of the sixteen gas canisters scattered about a level to maintain fuel in power generators, extending the time in the round, while the infected players attempt to stop them, or at times, detonate the canisters themselves. New maps specific for this mode have been distributed with the game.The game also features a "realism" mode, which can be enabled at any difficulty for any of the game modes. The realism mode removes some of the video game artifacts from the gameplay: survivors are not able to see the silhouettes of their teammates, and should they die, they can only be revived with a defibrillator kit and will no longer respawn later in the level. Damage dealt to Infected is also changed, with headshots dealing more damage to enemies, rather than limb or body shots, making gameplay even more of a challenge. The realism mode, which is designed to force players to work closely together and rely on voice communication, was created to give players a way "to be challenged as a team" without having to increase the difficulty level of the game.

 

PERSONAL THOUGHTS!!

As I mention in one of my blogs I have a comment that I hae been itching to share…. I HATE WITCHES!!!! After completing the hard rain campaign I have an urge to kill any witch I find no matter the situation! Anyways my thoughts of the game are mainly *clap clap clap* Very impresive. It is much harder now and that’s good because too many people were beating it easily on expert so now it is much more difficult. Graphics are not a big deal but to be honost I didn’t find them much better. The gore factor is hightend for melee players. Melee players being people who slice and hack everythin including witches and tanks (trust me it can be done I have done it) but not able to get smokers and spitters and boomers easily. I give an A+ for scenery though. Very nicely done. Especially for survival mode. Gotton gold standard by myself oh yeah! I know I am not judging the game from a fare angle seeming how it is meant to be played with friends and well I can’t due to internet problems.

 

                                             So for myslef I would give 8/10

 

Pros: Great scenery, new weapons, new enemys, new levels. Cons: simmilar in to many ways to the first

-Goliath

I give thanks to wikipidia who provided the plot information for me